The Foundation of My Life

I really don’t have the slightest idea how most of this “blog” stuff works, and it is only when dire necessity forces me to that I try to learn some new “trick” to get across what I want to say. Compared to the other blogs I see, I’m not very far along, but my trade is in words and images, and so far I’m doing fairly well with those. Recently, when looking at my stats, I followed a link to see what it was that caused someone to come to my blog, and I found a nice blog on the Tarot, which is one of my fascinations and one of my best learning tools. The person who authors that particular blog had explained his link to my blog (which I hadn’t even known about, but hey…) as “one of the best Sufi blogs I know.” I thought that was quite an honor, as at this point in my life, I am a fairly invisible Sufi, as Sufis go. I remember when I first heard of Sufism. I was a junior in high school, in rural West Virginia, and I had a student teacher who was interested in Sufism. At that time and in that locale, this was an incredibly arcane topic, but I searched and found a reference or two in the dusty books at the back of the local library. Somewhere during that period, I read Khalil Gibran for the first time, and I knew he was someone who was pointing out my way to me, but at that time, I didn’t know that he was known as a Sufi. Then, lo and behold! I saw that a network news program was going to have an interview with “A Sufi Mystic.” It turned out that the mystic was my own lifetime teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. I was 16, and I didn’t know the first thing about mysticism, I had no idea what meditation was, and I didn’t know what it meant to have a spiritual teacher. Except…. I did. I looked at this strange-looking gray-haired man in what looked like a wool robe and mantel, and I thought to myself, “I belong to that man.” And I did, even though I didn’t really know what that meant. In my senior year, I wrote a research paper on Sufism, and I would imagine that it was quite a piece of work, although when I came across it years later, I didn’t think it was too bad. God knows where it is now. But God always knows.

A few years later, age nineteen, I went to a group that studied the teachings of Edgar Cayce, and I told the other members that I was a Sufi. I told them I wanted to find a group that studied Sufism, and they directed me to the local Theosophical Society. I was, at that time attending art school in Cleveland, Ohio. That era was really the beginnings of my spiritual search: I attended many spiritual groups and meetings; I joined the Ananda Marga Yoga Society, and took initiation in that path, carefully explaining to the initiator that I was really a Sufi; he didn’t seem to mind. I attended many of the local Self-Realization Fellowship’s meditation groups, and I learned Sufi Dancing through another group of Yogis. In time, I became quite an organizer for local spiritual happenings, doing publicity for Baba Ram Dass when he came to town. We organizers were given the honor of having dinner with Ram Dass, and I remember it as being a very tense, formal occasion. I don’t know whether he was more tense, or we were, but we were all quite self-conscious. I think that our old friend Ram Dass would laugh with me now, remembering that. In fact, he probably is right now. It’s funny, you know…. We all, all of us in those halcyon days of the “Spiritual Trip” that was happening at the same time that people were “turning on, tuning in and dropping out”….we all seem like old friends now, all these years later, members of the same family. Ah, those were the days…Sufi Dancing on the grounds of the city art museum, doing kirtan, dancing with the local Hari Krishnas, sitting, sitting, sitting, here, there, everywhere, trying very hard to get “high,” and sometimes actually achieving it. Eventually, I found an initiator among the local Sufis (she deserves her own entry, to be accomplished soon), and then Pir Vilayat himself came to town, and the rest is history. He is my teacher, and now that he is no longer in the body he carried around when I knew him, he is more present than ever in my life. He was a tirelessly responsible spiritual father to me and his students: he inspired us all to join him at meditation camps in various beautiful places, and what he taught me–often sternly, always lovingly–became the foundation of my life. I was an active representative for his work for many years, and then…well, I became silent, and more silent. I began to stay still, and that stillness grew. I began to feel that I hadn’t done very well at being somebody, so perhaps I’d better try to be Nobody. As all that was happening, however, I was going back to school to study psychology, and I found, in academic study, that what I’d already been given by my teacher was far more advanced, far more elegant and far-reaching than the narrow disciplines and philosophies I was being taught. Yet it all melded together, and one inspired the other.

It’s late, and I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this entry. I think I just wanted to comment on how very much my spiritual path has meant to me, and why. The why is the easiest part, really: I was taught to walk a path of spiritual freedom. I was guided away from a dreary path of narrowness and onto the broader highway of truth. And all I was taught came to me in the guise of beauty, of light, of harmony. I learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what love really was, but I had a sense it was somewhere near, and there have been moments… And I learned to look.

A few weeks ago, I attended a workshop on sacred chant, and at one point in the seminar, the leader played her guitar and suggested that we all get up and greet each other in whatever way we chose. It was a very beautiful moment, and after nearly a year of solitude and inactivity, I felt the wonder of soul greeting soul, of bowing to another and feeling my crown chakra igniting theirs, of looking into the eyes of God with the eyes of God…

And all that, he taught me. I am no one, going nowhere, I know nothing, yet with his help, I may someday Know.

Sometimes the depth of a teaching, not seen at once, is understood later. I sang a mantram fifteen years without understanding it, and then suddenly it was revealed within me. There is a teacher in every one of us, who teaches when the time comes. –Inayat Khan

Harnessing the Energies of Love

Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Resurrection

The resurrection is a description of how the universe self-corrects, life always reasserting itself even when forces of death and darkness have temporarily prevailed. Like a tiny flower growing through cracks in broken cement, peace of mind emerging at last after periods of deep grief, or people continuing to fall in love despite the ravages of war, love always gets the final say. To lean on the resurrection is simply to recognize what’s true; that if happiness hasn’t arrived yet, then the story isn’t over.

Marianne Williamson, The Alchemy of Easter

Listening to the Muse

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, the words of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. -- Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey, p.124

The Children of Sorrow…

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. - Thomas Merton

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The dead let go, floating out of their graves, dressed for a wedding. - Charlie Hopkins

Necessary Loneliness

"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

Setting the World on Fire

"In the absence of a higher ideal the constant striving after material inventions has led man to such devices as have set the world on fire." --Inayat Khan

Also There

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there
–Hadewijch (13th Century)

About the Rays

If you have visited this blog before and are confused that not only has the domain name changed, so has the title, you know that it was called "Footprints" after the Zen Oxherding poems for quite awhile. The poems are still here (see above).
As to the new title, a long time ago, one of the students of Hazrat (Saint) Inayat Khan, named Kismet Stam, published a book with exactly the same title I have decided to use here. It was a beautiful book and has long been out of print, which is why I feel comfortable using it, and why it is meant as a sort of tribute: Rays, pages in the life of a Sufi. To the Sufi, each of us is a ray of light shooting out from the central Sun that is God. This is the expression of this ray.

Crowned with the Stars

"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you." --Thomas Traherne

SIX

The valley spirit never dies;
It is the woman, primal mother.
Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.
It is like a veil barely seen.
Use it; it will never fail. - Tao te Ching

DWELLING

I have nothing in my home that I do not find to be useful nor know to be beautiful. --William Morris

The True Invincibles

When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. --Gandhi

My Father and Best Friend: Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Hazrat Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan

By my dear friend Gregory Blann

Who does the typing?

I've been a student of the Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan for over 35 years. I have been his representative and an instructor of meditation and comparative religion during much of that time. I guide people seeking a contemplative path, in both individual meditative practice and alchemical retreats.
I am a psychotherapist and a teacher of psychology, focusing on the cllinical, depth and transpersonal theories of psychology. I have a Master's Degree in Existential Phenomenology and am "ABD" for my Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology. I am currently open to working with clients under the appropriate circumstances. Email me if you think we could work together in a collaborative fashion. I'll do what I can to help you go where you want to go.

God is in the Machine

With gratitude to the succession of my many and dearly-loved Macs through the years. Writers like to thank pivotal people in their lives who inspired them and helped them to become who they are. I have a long list of those too, but it was the Macintosh computer that set me free: it thinks as fast as I do, it thinks LIKE I do, and it has Soul. And I can listen to Krishna Das while I work on my writing, edit photographs or do creative work. I don’t do Windows. http://www.apple.com/

The Origin of the Footprints

I am following a Sufi path, in the International Sufi Order of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. You will notice many quotes from his writings here, and from those of his successor and my own Pir (teacher), Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. The most important thing that Sufism has given me has been complete spiritual freedom, which is why you will read many other quotes here, and my explorations of other paths, other philosophies. The Sufi, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan said, has two points of view: his own, and that of the other. It is my inherent conviction that, as all rivers lead to the sea, all paths lead to the one goal most sacred to the heart. In our Sufi Order, we call this the Message: “the Message is a call to Awakening for all those meant to awaken, and a lullabye for those who are still meant to sleep.” –Inayat Khan

Of course, he himself would say that we are all awake, just as we are all, in different degrees, partially asleep! But each condition is temporary and meaningful: “I have come here not to teach you that which you do not know, but to awaken in you that which has always been your knowledge.” –Inayat Khan